


Until Your Lungs Give Out

by pyrchance



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: ...for now, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Angst, Gorgon!Patrick, M/M, Non-Consensual Touching, Pre-Relationship, Siren!Pete, Unhappy Ending, Van Days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25685614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrchance/pseuds/pyrchance
Summary: The band doesn’t talk about it.Everyone knows about Joe and Patrick. Joe passes out predictions as casually as he passes a joint. Patrick is a steel trap that can’t hide anything beneath his glasses and hat without giving everything away. Andy is as human as they come, even if he sometimes seems superhuman.Pete knows the others know about him. There’s a reason he’s so well-known in the Chicago scene and it isn’t just his megawatt smile and superb bass playing abilities.He just hopes they know what they're getting in for.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	Until Your Lungs Give Out

Joe is the worst seer Pete knows which is the only reason he hangs out with him.

See, Pete has this thing about fate. He once held his hand to a bunsen burner after some girl in biology turned over his palm and stroked his lifeline. Pete doesn’t let fate fuck with him. Pete barely believes in the future. If he has one, he sure as hell doesn’t need anyone else to tell him it’s going to be dismal.

Joe, though, is barely seventeen and so high most days he has trouble seeing straight, let alone through time. When he calls Pete up at asscrack o’clock ranting about some guy for their new band and claiming to have a ‘really good feeling about this,’ Pete doesn’t think much of it. He’s still pissed from his last fight with Chris, still hoarse and bruised from their last performance, and still a little bit wobbly drunk when he lets Joe drag him into the basement of some house in the suburbs.

The kid who opens the door wears a sweater with shorts and terrible socks, but Pete is too busy staring at his _head_ to notice. He has a hunter’s hat pulled low over his ears, a pair of thick, tinted glasses, and a smile that doesn’t hide the grimace on his face.

Joe has brought him a gorgon. A _gorgon_.

And by the look on the kid’s face he knows he’s been made.

“Sup, man,” smiles Pete unable to help himself. “Nice hat.”

The gorgon frowns. His eyes flicker up from behind his glasses and Pete shivers as that killing gaze rests on him. It’s just a fleeting glance, almost nothing, but the thrill of it pulls goosebumps from his arms.

“This is Patrick,” says Joe proudly, gesturing with a sort of _ta-dah_ movement. “I’m telling you, he’s just what this band needs.”

Joe has always been a terrible seer. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make him wrong.

Half and hour later, when Patrick reluctantly opens his mouth to sing, Pete shivers for an entirely different reason.

He’s read all the myths. He knows he shouldn’t stare. But he suddenly understands all of the men who couldn’t pull their gazes from Medusa.

Growing up, Pete’s house was a silent place. His family read bible passages at Christmas time, stacked library shelves where a TV might go, and strictly listened to talk shows instead of the radio in the car.

It wasn’t until he began sleeping over at other kid’s houses that he realized his own was unusual.Pete didn’t go to a regular school—not in elementary—but he didn’t know why. When he finally made friends with a neighborhood kid, he just knew his dad frowned a lot about it and that his mom had to have a long conversation with the mom of the kid who’s sleepover it was.

It didn’t matter. That night, cramped into a sleeping bag on his neighbor’s floor, Pete found religion in the first blast of the trumpets as the Star Wars scroll rolled. It was stepping into the sun for the first time. The sound was so bright he could barely see. He watched it again, quietly, after his friend fell asleep, rewinding and rewinding those first few notes until they played a perfect loop in his head.

He was always chasing the next few notes after that. It didn’t matter that his mom found out and he wasn’t allowed to go to that friend’s house any more. Pete had _heard_ something that night. It didn’t matter if he never heard it again—Pete had found music.

Patrick can sing. Patrick can really sing.

Pete’s never given much thought about childbirth but he thinks he almost gets what all the fuss is about the first time he hears Patrick’s voice. A golden brick road is suddenly laid out before him. Patrick’s voice is an accident, but Pete wants to bundle it up and keep it. He wants to croon sweet words into Patrick’s ear and see what they grow into. Wants to tuck the voice into bed and wake up each morning with it in his life.

Patrick hunches his round shoulders and glares at the floor the first time Pete mentions something about it. It’s their first official band practice. Pete is still learning to read him.

“I’m a drummer,” Patrick mutters. “Stop joking around.”

Pete snorts. “We don’t need a drummer. I know a whole bunch of drummers. What we need is you.”

“I’m not a singer,” says Patrick to his shoes.

“Are you kidding me!”

Between a bass, two guitars, and a set of drums, Pete is still the loudest thing in the room. It’s just the three of them so far and they’re crowded up in Patrick’s house because he has the drum kit. He and Joe have managed to coax Patrick into singing a few bars of Blink-182 but he’s still stubbornly clutching his sticks and sticking to his stool like he’s the Titanic and Pete’s the iceberg and the drums are the only things keeping him afloat.

Patrick doesn’t look up. In the one week they’ve known each other, Patrick has maybe lifted his eyes from the ground a total of four times—mostly to look up at the ceiling when his mom called. It makes Pete glad he’s squirreled away that fleeting glance Patrick had given him on their first meeting. It also makes him greedy for more.

Still, Pete doesn’t need to see Patrick’s eyes to know he’s listening. Perks of being a siren is that everyone is always listening.

“You’re a singer. You’re _our_ singer. You’ve got to get over whatever the hold up is, dude.”

Patrick shakes his head. Under his hat, his mouth pinches. A stray thought of Pete’s wonders if he has fangs. “This is ridiculous. If this is some—some _experiment_ or something. If you’re just trying to, like, _prove_ something—”

Pete laughs. It comes out sort of meanly, not how Pete meant it at all. He was just surprised. “What the hell are you talking about? Prove what? To who?”

“I don’t _know!_ ” snaps Patrick. He’s an incredibly sweaty guy. His face is all red. It must be hot under all that hat. Pete wonders if Patrick’s snakes need to breathe, then turns to shake away the image of dozens of dead snake corpses dangling off Patrick’s head. Then he thinks better of it, pulling the thought back in and wondering if he can’t make a sweet metaphor out of it.

In the mean time, Patrick has worked himself into a fit. “Joe, you’ve got to see that he’s messing with us. There’s no way _Pete Wentz_ wants to be in a band with us. This was funny for like a day, but I’m done waiting for the punchline.”

Pete laughter cuts away. He straightens up, glancing at Joe who is sitting up now too, holding his palm against his guitar strings to mute the fuzz.

“I know it’s a lot,” Joe says and Pete tenses because Joe actually sounds serious, “but Pete’s cool. You sound good. Pete’s right. I told you big things were coming.”

“You were _high!”_ bites back Patrick. He turns his ire back on Pete, who’s barely recovered from what Joe’s just said to catch what comes next. Luckily, Patrick chooses to yell it at him. “You’re _Pete Wentz!_ You’re sitting in my shitty basement while your _Pete Wentz_ from _Arma Angelus_ and you’re telling me you want _me_ to sing in your band. _Me?_ In what world does that make sense? What are you even doing here?”

At the mention of _Arma,_ Pete sobers. The whole point of this project was to not have to think about his real band for a little while.

“Band practice,” Pete says, pleased when his voice comes out coolly, “same as you.”

Patrick flings his hands up. He screeches, “But we’re not _the same!_ It’s not like you need a band. What’s even the point? You’re _Pete Wentz_!”

“You don’t need to keep yelling my name,” Pete mutters, “I get enough of that already, thanks.” Then he grins. He’d honestly meant people screaming his name at his shows. There’s no reason for Patrick to go that shade of puce, or for him to throw a drum stick at Pete’s head.

Band practice ends swiftly after that. Pete assumes the whole band ends after that and retreats home with his ears ringing and the bruises on his arms from last night throbbing in time to his pulse.

Three days later, Joe shows back up and announces it’s time for band practice.

Pete just stares at him.

“Grab your shit, we’re doing this,” Joe says, “You told me if I found us a singer and a drummer, you were in. Don’t pussy out now.”

“Patrick quit,” Pete says.

“Patrick will come around. He’s the singer, just like you said.”

“He hates me,” Pete replies.

“He’s scared of you.” Joe’s curls bounce as he shakes his head. “He’ll get over it.”

There’s a ring of certainty in Joe’s voice. Normally, this would send a pool of unease in him. Today, Pete perks up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we still don’t have a drummer.”

“That’ll work out,” Joe says confidently. “Now, get your bass and let’s _go_.”

Pete doesn’t know what Joe said to Patrick, but their second band practice ends without anyone walking out or throwing anything. Nobody yells, except for Pete when he’s supposed to, and though Patrick opens his mouth like he wants to, they don’t talk about it.

Pete has a band. A brand new band. And he doesn’t even have to _sing_.

After an evening listening to Patrick’s hesitant vocals, Pete’s practically buzzing with it.

Pete got his first tape player in sixth grade. He bought it himself on his way home from school after a quiet girl nervously passed him a mixtape wrapped in messy candy-cane paper. He smuggled both the Walkman and the mixtape home in his backpack, knowing his parents would confiscate the tech without really knowing why, and spent that entire winter break alone in his room listening to music he _owned_ for the first time. He fell half in love with that girl he barely knew. He remembered thinking he owed her his entire soul.

The first time his mom caught him humming The Beatles under his breath, she broke a glass while doing dishes.

The next night, he found his Walkman missing from its place beneath his pillow and a notebook left on his bed. _A safe place to sing,_ his mother had written. His father had sat him down in his office for a very long talk that involved a lot of words like _can’t_ and _different_ and _dangerous_.

Pete had thrown a tantrum so terrible he passed out from screaming and woke up to shattered bedroom windows. He did it again in the psychiatrist’s office his parents dragged him to and again in their car on the way home. That time was so bad, his mother fainted and Pete had been so frightened by the blood trickling out of her ears he didn’t say a word for the rest of the week.

By the time school resumed session, Pete had a shiny bottle of new pills with his name on it and a cracked foundation where his mother and father once stood. The pills were supposed to make him calm, but they hurt his stomach and made his head all slow. That Monday, he gleefully traded the bottle for an eighth grader’s second-hand tape deck. This time, he hid it better.

He kept the notebook though. He had to, even before he forgave his parents for keeping the world from him. He understood now, a little bit, about why his parents were so scared. Why they looked at him sometimes like a bomb about to burst.

But his head was full of so much music, so many words, to try to keep them in was to burst.

Patrick throws up before their first real show.

Pete’s the one that finds him bent over a toilet bowl three minutes before they’re meant to go on. He steps inside, twisting the bolt lock and cutting off the crowd of people already screaming his name.

“Hey,” says Pete, giving Patrick’s shoes a little kick. “What’d you get the bartender to serve you?”

Patrick doesn’t look up from the bowl. “Coke.”

“Must’ve been a pretty strong Coke.”

Patrick just shakes his head. He’s got his forehead pressed against the seat which is fully disgusting and his face is all red and shiny. “Is it over yet?” he croaks.

Pete is really going to have to have a talk with the bartender. He isn’t a narc, but Patrick barely even looks _seventeen_. They can’t be getting kicked out of clubs and stuff when Pete only got them as an opener in using his own name. “It hasn’t even started yet, man.”

Patrick’s groan echoes in the porcelain.

Pete considers him. He also considers the disgusting floor beneath him. After a moment, he decides his singer is worth more than his jeans and gingerly lowers himself to the floor.

“So,” he begins, blowing his cheeks out around the word, “when you said you had stage fright…”

“I told you I couldn’t do this. I told you I’m not a singer. I told you. I can’t do this, Pete.”

Pete frowns. He goes to put his hand on Patrick’s shoulder, but Patrick jerks away. Pete says, “I thought we were done with all of that. It’s just a bit of nerves. Come on. What’s the worse that could happen?”

This is decidedly the _last_ thing Patrick wants to hear. He curls up even tighter, wrapping his arms around his head and practically making out with the toilet bowl.

“I’m not going out there. I’m not. I’m not. I am not fucking doing this.”

“Yes, you are. Patrick, look at me.”

“No.”

“I’m fucking serious, Patrick. This is important.”

Slowly, Patrick unfolds. He peels his arms from his head and his head from the toilet, not looking at Pete but reluctantly turning his body in his direction. Close enough.

“You’re scared of people looking at you. I get it, believe me. And I’m guessing your scared of what happens if you look at them too. Am I right?”

Pete knows he’s hit the nail on the head when Patrick gives a tiny nod, fingers curling in his jeans.

Pete thinks quickly. He already knows what he’s going to have to do, even though he hates it. He wants to be in a band. He wants to be in a band so much it _hurts_ sometimes, but the band he’s in right now is already hurting. Pete needs something new. Something sustainable. Something where he never has to sing again, where he won’t come home with so many pieces of himself missing.

He’s willing to do just about anything if he gets to keep Patrick’s voice.

“Okay, look. Here’s how we’re going to do this. Your job is to focus on singing. Pull your hat over your eyes, stare at the floor, imagine people in their underwear, whatever you need to do. I’ll handle the rest.”

“The rest?” Patrick asks quietly.

Pete takes a deep breath. “You know, the talking and shit. I’ll work the crowd. It’s not like I don’t know how.”

“You’ll be the frontman?” Patrick lifts his chin just slightly. Pete can see that he’s still frowning, though he doesn’t look so gray. “The singer is always the frontman.”

Yes, that’s what Pete had been banking on.

“Fuck that.” Pete nudges Patrick’s knee with his own. “It’s our band. We make the rules. You just worry about singing, I’ll worry about the crowd. Trust me, they won’t be able to keep their eyes off me.”

“I know,” Patrick says. He’s seems to have calmed down somewhat, his face is a little less splotchy, but he’s still sitting on the floor of a truly disgusting bathroom.

Pete decides enough is enough of that. He grabs hold of one of Patrick’s shoes, yanks it off his foot, and slaps him with it. “Get off the floor, loser.”

Patrick swears at him, but picks himself up off the floor. Pete gently deposits his shoe back into his hand once he’s steady on his feet

“You sing, I talk. That’s the deal.”

Patrick stares down at his shoe like it holds all of the secrets of the universe. His voice is very small when he says, “Fine.”

Pete grins, clapping his hands together. “Yes! This will work. I know it will.”

As Patrick struggles into his shoe while standing, Pete catches him smiling.“Now you sound like Joe.”

Pete fills up notebooks the way most people fill up their gas tank. He rides high when the pages stretch before him, scribbling large and loose across the lines, and growing more and more conservative with his space once the pages begin to disappear.

His parents always warned him to consider his words carefully. It was his duty, his father never failed to remind him, to remember to use his voice for good. His dad is a corporate lawyer. Pete fails to see what is particularly _good_ about that.

Later, Pete would understand sirens weren’t meant to be good anyway. Sirens were meant to lure people in and gobble them up, to strip the meat from their bones and spit them back out again. Young Pete didn’t know this. He didn’t know much about what he was, but he did suspect that if he had to try so hard to be good it just meant he was something inherently nasty.

Pete spends a lot of time that summer thinking about Patrick. About his voice. About his talent. More than anything, about the threat he poses.

Once they convince Andy, once Pete makes puppy-eyes at Patrick’s mom, once they get their van and their gear loaded up and leave town, Pete has a lot of extra time on his hands. He studies Patrick’s red eyebrows and wonders what color scales he’s hiding under that hat. He writes metaphors full of sunsets and roses and blood. It’s very trite. Patrick never takes his hat off, not even when he sleeps.

Patrick also takes his personal space very, very seriously. Pete’s arm is bruised dark and swollen after the third time he was punched _hard_ for brushing Patrick’s shoulders. Pete doesn’t know if that means the snakes are venomous or if Patrick is just paranoid, but that just makes the game that much more thrilling. He doesn’t mind sacrificing one arm to bruises. He’s less damaged than he’s been in years.

“You need to stop messing with him,” Joe says as Patrick storms off towards the gas station bathroom and Pete catches his breath from where he’s just been pushed against the van.

“I mess with everyone,” Pete replies.

“He’s going to quit if you don’t stop it.”

Pete pause. He squints his eyes in the direction Patrick’s tight shoulders have disappeared before turned that gaze on Joe suspiciously.

“You saw that?” Pete asks. He reminds himself that he doesn’t want to know the future. He doesn’t. Not even if for the first time his dreams are filled a hazy, hopeful golden.

Joe snorts. “Any idiot can see that.” Then he stalks off to smoke before Pete can badger him further.

Pete considers this information carefully—or as carefully has he can during a thirteen minute fuel stop. The thought of _not_ making music any more with Patrick fills him with a silence that is too powerful to bear. Patrick sings his words. Without him, Pete might as well slit his own throat. He’d rather do that then open it and see what nightmare crawl out.

When they load back up into the van, Pete is the last one in. He ignores the pissy way Patrick holds himself against the window and tosses two things into his lap.

The pack of licorice is just standard. It’s the ugly green beanie that makes Patrick look up and smile.

His father installs bars on the basement window in high school.

Pete has graduated from shitty mix-tapes to a booming CD collection. He leaves the stuff he dislikes in his sock drawer and under his mattress for the days his parents raid his room, keeping the gems— _Metallica, The Smiths, Queen_ —hidden inside a hole he carved out in the wall under his bed. He wants a record player so bad it hurts and keeps a running list of bands he wants to try in the margins of his homework.

He attends his first show when he’s fourteen. The band is absolutely terrible and the friend he goes with is a dick but Pete leaves with his skin humming and his smile aching. Every bit of himself has been depleted singing his words back to the stage instead of to his journal. There’s magic in the pit. Hands reach out to touch him and his body is some holy thing they lift and Pete feels so high, so much higher than any of those sticky pills his doctor prescribes him, he never ever wants to come down again. 

His father installs bars on the basement window.

Pete nearly breaks his leg jumping from the second floor.

His parents remove the door to his bedroom.

Pete crashes on a friend’s couch for days until they folds and put it back.

They send him to camp.

Pete is quiet when he comes back, for a time at least.

His mother gives him another journal and a bottle full of pills.

The van smells like four unwashed men are living in it, heat blasting, in the middle of the summer. Pete writes down _rank_ and _rancid_ and _putrid_ in lyrics about throwing up 7-11 jerky across six lane freeways.

They pair up old and young to drive in shifts. In the front seat, Andy blasts Black Sabbath tapes on low as their headlights tear through Ohio. In the back, Pete curls up against an amp with a blanket and feels Patrick’s feet against his spine. Pete can’t sleep, but that’s not unusual. Patrick can’t sleep because Pete’s the one laying down. There’s room for two, but not enough not to touch.

Pete gives it up. He sits up, elbowing Patrick’s knees. That’s generally a safe zone.

Patrick jerks, like he’d been nodding off. He blinks sleepily at Pete and he doesn’t seem to have noticed that his glasses have slipped down. His eyes flash yellow-danger with every streetlight that passes by.

The gaze doesn’t kill Pete. Of course it doesn’t. There’s not a thing about Patrick he doesn’t trust, except maybe that he won’t leave.

“Your turn,” Pete whispers, nodding his head at the sleeping space.

“Wh’ time is’t?”

“Time to sleep, Pattycakes.”

Patrick nods tiredly and curls up in the blankets Pete just abandoned. He buries his head into the pillow and is out almost before he’s all the way down.

Pete’s notebook is somewhere in his bag tucked under the front seat. He won’t wake Patrick trying to crawl around and get it. For a while, he mimics Patrick’s previous position. He tilts his head back and watches the blackness of the world run by outside, stares at his dim reflection in the glass so long it starts to scare him.

He doesn’t do silence well. Sitting in it or being it. Even with Andy’s quiet music, Pete’s skin simmers with a restlessness he knows. There are words in him that want to come out.

Slowly, very slowly, Pete lays himself down. His knees bump Patrick’s knees and his elbows bump Patrick’s elbows as they come to rest side by side.

Patrick’s mouth is open slightly in sleep. There’s no fangs. Pete studies the lines of his face in the dark and the shine of old sweat on his face. He wonders how he got this lucky.

“Hey, Patrick,” he whispers. “You know, I really think we can make it. I think Joe might be right. I think you might actually take us there.”

It’s a promise so sweet Pete can hardly breathe thinking it. What would it mean, to have his dreams come true and not even have to die for it? To hear his words across the radio and not be ripped apart?

“Anything you want, Patrick. Anything at all,” Pete whispers.

He doesn’t sleep. He stays in that fuzzy place where anything seems possible and the world is quiet and he pours his words into Patrick’s sleeping ears instead.

He sits up at the first sign of Patrick shifting. By the time, Andy pulls them into a diner for breakfast the forgiving shadows of nighttime have given into the harsh light of morning.

Pete was a teenage siren who found his way into clubs and wild house parties.

He worshipped the bands on stage like they were his gods because they were. They made him feel like nothing else in the world. He stripped himself bare at their alters each weekend and felt the weight of his silence lift. The crowds adored him. The bands seemed to sing straight to him. His laughter could shake the floorboards and rattle the windows.

Pete in the pit was a prophet possessed.

On stage, he thought he would ascend.

When _Arms Angelus_ began it was the single greatest thing Pete had ever been a part of. Suddenly, there was a space for all his words. They didn’t just live in his notebooks anymore. They tore from his throat and made casualties of the crowd. It felt good and the band liked it and the crowds love it and Pete thought he knew what love was when his words were shouted back in his face.

He didn’t know how much love could hurt at the time, but he learned.

The band doesn’t talk about it.

Everyone knows about Joe and Patrick. Joe passes out predictions as casually as he passes a joint. Patrick is a steel trap that can’t hide anything beneath his glasses and hat without giving everything away. Andy is as human as they come, even if he sometimes seems superhuman.

Pete knows the others know about him. There’s a reason he’s so well-known in the Chicago scene and it isn’t just his megawatt smile and superb bass playing abilities.

In _Arma_ , Pete had fronted the band. He’d screamed and shaken and lost himself on stage and it didn’t matter if he sounded _good_ , people had thrown themselves at the stage trying to touch him. He’d watched a girl literally claw her way over the crowd to brush her fingers against his shoes. He’s been the cause of too many bar fights to count. The clubs hired extra security armed with earplugs on the nights _Arma Angelus_ rolled in.

It was a lot. People weren’t always gentle; not with themselves, and certainly not with Pete. He got used to coming home with torn clothes and bruises on his wrists where fans had held on and just not let go. His parents installed a surveillance system for the pesky kids that got melodies stuck in their heads and couldn’t rest until they found him. For Pete, who had never felt more alive than when he was almost dying, it was almost too much.

The band disagreed. They wanted more. More screaming, more fans, more people calling their ( _his)_ name.

Pete said no. There’d been a fight.

Pete sits in the recording booth across from their fancy new producer and prepares himself for another one.

“Patrick is the singer,” Pete says firmly.

It’s all four of them sitting around the recording booth. Despite laying down guitar tracks all day, it’s very quiet. Patrick pushes his glasses up his nose and stares down at his lap firmly, the way he always does when he wants to hide or kill something. Pete doesn’t have the same problem are glares at their producer.

“You boys need to be practical here,” the suit is saying, “Music is extremely cut throat. If you don’t make the most of every tool at your disposal, you’re never going to make it. Frankly, Pete, you’re a frontman’s wet dream. I’m not even sure why we’re having this conversation.”

“Patrick is the singer,” Pete says again.

The silence of the other guys is getting to him. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if they _agree_ with the suit. He can’t imagine _not_ being in Fall Out Boy, but even he’s not suicidal enough to want his _voice_ on the _radio_.

The suit’s smile dims. His chair squeaks as he leans forward. “You’re a siren, Pete. You think the label signed the four of you without knowing that? You’ve got a rare talent. If it’s about the money—”

“I’m the singer.”

The entire room turns to look at Patrick. Patrick who is hiding his gaze in his glasses and his hair in his hat and whose voice is trembling but clear.

The suit raises a hand. “I’m not saying you’re out of the band, Patrick. You write the music. You’ve obviously got talent. If Joe plays lead, you can play rhythm. Or, if Pete doesn’t want to play bass and sing you can—”

“I’m the singer,” Patrick says again, lifting his head for the first time since they’d entered. Then he doesn’t something he’s never done before, and pins the suits with a stare. The color drains from the producer’s face. His cheeks fall gray and sickly the longer Patrick stares and stares and doesn’t stop. “Do you understand?”

Pete has never been so turned on in his life. He can barely tear his gaze away from the expression on Patrick’s face to watch the suit nod his head rapidly.

“Yes! Yes, I understand. _Please_.”

Patrick breaks his stare, dropping his eyes to his lap and slumping. Even through victory he doesn’t look happy. Pete takes the risk of throwing his arm around Patrick’s shoulders and grinning at the shaken man.

“Don’t you worry. You can tell the label I’m the front man. I’ll talk to the crowd, take the heat off of Patrick, whatever. I’ll even scream a little.”

With every word, the tension in the room diminishes. That’s his talent. Pete grins wider. He’s always been good with words.

He squeezes Patrick’s shoulders once, before letting go. Miraculously, Pete’s made it through the whole contact without an elbow in the gut.

He can feel Patrick’s gaze drifting to him, trying to be discreet but failing terribly, and it does nothing but buoy Pete as he leans in for the kill.

“But Patrick is the singer. My words, his voice. That’s what the label signed us for. That’s what they’re getting.” He shakes his head and when he looks over again at Patrick, Patrick is blinking at him with wide eyes. Pet doesn’t look away, even as he says, “ _He’s_ the golden ticket, so you better get used to treating him like one.”

Pete met Patrick once before that time on the porch, but he doesn’t remember it.

This is how it happened.

Patrick was a teenage gorgon terrified of his body and his own reflection, but he loved music enough that sometimes he risked getting closer. He heard about a new band from a friend of a friend and though the stye of music didn’t seem like Patrick’s type the awed look on his face intrigued him.

He didn’t trust himself to go into the club where the band was playing. He was too young to anyway, but he found the backdoor in the alley behind the building and it was cracked enough he could hear the thrumming of the drums and bass and the shrill scream of the guitar.

Patrick spent an hour and a half curled up under the awning of that backdoor, pressing his ears to the cracks. There was a singer inside on stage that Patrick couldn’t see but could somehow picture. His voice was awful, truly awful, but Patrick listened to his words and couldn’t move.

Ninety minutes and the music finally faded. Ninety-five and Patrick emerged from the strange drifting place he’d been caught in, clawing at the door like a stray dog begging to get in. Nine-nine minutes and Patrick was just standing up when the backdoor opened and a guy a few years older than him tumbled out.

It was cold in Chicago that year and the guy was wearing a tank-top in tatters. He looked startled to see Patrick, almost frightened, which was honestly Patrick’s preferred reaction to the sight of him.

“Hey. Sorry,” Patrick said, stepping back slightly. “I’m just getting out of here.”

The guy eyed him. His eyes were rimmed in black and very tired, but awake somehow too, like coffee at midnight. He didn’t say anything, but he shivered slightly. Patrick noticed a line of scratches down his biceps and what almost looked like teeth marks on his hand. Maybe this guy had a different reason to be frightened after all.

Patrick wasn’t a monster. He may look it, but he was very much a good person. He took out his spare beanie from his coat pocket and held it out. “You want it? You look cold.”

The weary look in the guy’s eyes slowly faded. He took the hat, shoving it onto his face and pulling it down low. His eyes ran to the end of the alley, then back to Patrick.

“You have to go?” Patrick asked, assuming. The guy blinked at him in surprise. Patrick shrugged, “You look like you were running away.”

The guy nodded. He took a few steps away, before stopping. He turned and smiled at Patrick. “Thanks,” he croaked. His voice was broken, but recognizable. Patrick’s breath caught. He took a step forward, but the guy was already scurrying away.

That night was the last time Patrick trusted himself to take those steps downtown, not after he recalled pawing at the door to get in.

Pete won’t remember that first meeting, but Patrick will. He’ll still be thinking of the Pete’s broken body and shattered voice and the way Patrick had wanted nothing more than to tear off a piece of him in that moment for years.

They’re in a hotel room the night after that terrible meeting.

Andy and Joe don’t seem mad, but they room together leaving Pete and Patrick on their own. They haven’t heard back from their label. Pete is wondering if it’s not too late to call the producer and sing him a different tune.

Patrick looks pissed.

He storms into the hotel room—an actual _ho_ tel too, not even a shitty Motel 6—and tosses his bag on the furthest bed. His guitar case he sets down with tenderer hands, but the back of his neck is bright red and shiny.

Pete edges into the room, skirting around the nearest bed and setting down his things without a sound. Patrick is the type to explode and storm off when he’s pissed. Inside their hotel room, on the wrong side of midnight, Patrick’s a ticking time bomb with no where else to go.

“I can’t believe this.”

The first of Patrick’s anger is released with a hiss. Patrick’s back is to Pete and his fists are clenched, but Pete gingerly tip toes closer until he can slide a hand onto Patrick’s shoulder, feeling the muscles bunch and tense.

“Don’t,” says Patrick, shrugging away.

“You let me back there,” Pete points out. He hasn’t forgotten. It’s the first time Pete got to touch Patrick without a flinch.

Patrick doesn’t turn around. “I shouldn’t have. Do you know how dangerous that was? It was stupid.”

“I don’t care,” says Pete curling his fingers around Patrick’s shoulder again. Patrick is a live wire under his palm, but he doesn’t jerk away. He lets Pete tug him, turn him around until they’re standing face to face.

“Don’t say that either,” says Patrick, frowning at the ground. Pete can feel the heat of his skin burning through his t-shirt. “You should care. I’m not safe.”

Pete _really_ doesn’t care. His thumb runs up the side of Patrick’s neck, rubbing. He can feel the jump of Patrick’s pulse there.

“Thank you,” says Pete, wanting to bury his head in Patrick’s chest. He bets Patrick gives the best hugs. He’d bet a million dollars that’s true.

“You don’t have to thank me,” says Patrick. He still hasn’t moved, but he’s all stiff, like he wants to. “That’s our deal, Pete.”

“I know.” Pete doesn’t know how to explain. He doesn’t know what kind of words make up the lump that’s in his throat. He doesn’t trust them to come out right. “Can I just—Patrick, can I just hug you?”

Patrick tenses like a pulled bow. Pete waits as patiently as he’s able. Patrick doesn’t move. He doesn’t even seem to breathe. Pete has to take his chance. He just has to.

He steps in and Patrick seems too shocked to remember to look away because his pupils are blown huge. Pete wraps his arms around Patrick’s waist and rests his head on his shoulder and he was _right_. Even stiff and frightened, this is the nicest thing Pete’s ever felt. Patrick is warm and exactly as soft as Pete had thought.

“ _Pete_.”

Patrick’s voice comes out high and breathless. Pete nuzzles his face into Patrick’s chest and closes his eyes. “Nuh uh. Not yet. You haven’t even hugged me back yet.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.” Pete knows this without a doubt. The worst thing Patrick could ever do to him he already refused to do. “Come on. I trust you.”

Patrick’s arms raise so slowly and so softly Pete almost doesn’t feel them. Patrick hugs Pete like he’s something he’s afraid to break. Pete sort of wants to be broken—sort of love that he trusts Patrick not to hurt him to do it.

“Enough,” breathes out Patrick, shaking beneath him. “Pete, enough, _enough_.”

Pete pulls back, sighing. He doesn’t step back though. There’s no way he’s going to stop touching Patrick now. Not when he’s finally able to.

He keeps his palms running up and down Patrick’s arms as Patrick shudders. Patrick’s face is tight, almost like he’s in pain, and Pete is suddenly terrified he took things a step too far.

“Patrick? Talk to me here, buddy,” Pete implores, stroking his hand back up to Patrick’s neck, rubbing there. “You okay?”

Patrick shakes his head, then nods. His eyes slit open, brows pinched. “That was incredibly risky.”

“I trust you,” Pete says. “Come on, Trick. You know I trust you.”

“Well, I don’t trust _me_!” Patrick snaps back.

He tries to step back, but Pete, emboldened by their proximity, steps with him. “Patrick, look at me. Look at me, I’m fine. We’re both fine.”

“It’s not _fine_ , Pete! Would you just stop and listen to me for once!”

“I’m listening. I swear I’m listening. I know you’re scared.”

“No, you’re _talking_. Damn it, Pete! _Stop_ _touching me!_ ”

Patrick jerks back and—

Pete holds him by the neck and—

Their mouths crash together. For a moment it’s like all of Pete’s words are just gone. They break on each other like two crashing waves. Pete can’t hear himself think over the collision.

He feels Patrick’s hands fist around his shoulders and his mouth opens under Pete’s mouth and Pete pulls Patrick in but the scruff of his neck as they melt into one person. His nail scraps the rim of Patrick’s hat. Something _moves_ just beneath the surface and—

Patrick turns to stone beneath him. Pete’s lips break against Patrick’s like a wave upon a rock. Patrick is hard and unyielding and motionless beneath him. Pete licks his lips and feels Patrick’s teeth barred like a dog and that’s all he gets before he’s shoved away.

Patrick retreats from him like a man wounded. He hunches in the corner of the hotel room, back half turned, wiping at his lips, staring up at Pete with eyes wide through the tint of his sunglasses.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he says.

Pete takes a step forward. Pete is not used to people saying no. Pete is a lure, a bobble. People want to play with him. That’s what he’s made for.

“Come near me again and I’ll quit the band,” Patrick says.

Pete stops in his tracks.

He smiles, but it quickly fades. It’s a joke, but no one’s laughing. It’s the worst possible outcome pulled up and made ugly between the two of them.

“You wouldn’t,” Pete denies, and knows his voice is trembling. It’s unfathomable.

Patrick stands up straight. For the first time in their lives Patrick stares directly at Pete like he _means_ it and Pete _freezes_.

“I will literally kill you, Pete.”

“You won’t.”

“ _I_ _will_.”

Patrick’s words are as certain as any of Joe’s prophesies. In another first, Pete finds himself rendered speechless.

He has no words for what to say when the only thing he has to live for is the person walking away.

**Author's Note:**

> This is intended as a first part in a series, so don't yell at me (that much) about the ending just yet. Or do. That comment box is there for a reason. 
> 
> You can also come yell at me on tumblr @[pyrchance](https://pyrchance.tumblr.com).


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